Paradise Killer Review
Not that I would say things are going well this week, but it seems like America isn’t quite the grim hellscape it was over the past 14 days, which is a little ironic considering that now the west coast is looking like either Mars or Hell. There have been some things one might consider improvements, but sadly there is still quite a lot of hate and violence out there, so the protests will continue. As the resistance against the increasingly hostile government persists, make sure you look out for your physical and mental health to make sure you can keep going. One way you might like to unwind is by playing a video game that gives you the opportunity to do something you can’t in real life: bring justice to killers protected by privilege. Paradise Killer from Kaizen Game Works does just that.
Paradise Killer is a surreal, open-world detective game, so I want to warn my readers right now that people and places have extremely weird names and it might take special effort to keep track of them. On the eve of the birth of the island Perfect 25, the Council has been murdered by an unknown assailant, so Justice recalls ace investigator Lady Love Dies from her exile in the Idle Lands to solve the case. Henry Division, an island citizen possessed by a demon for the last decade, is the prime suspect, but others wonder if the perpetrator is one of the Syndicate, a group of immortal island occupants who serve the Council and Lady Love Dies’ former colleagues. Given free reign of the island 24, Love Dies must interrogate inhabitants both human and not, scour the streets for clues, and determine which of the island’s many secrets are worth killing for.
The first thing I noticed about Paradise Killer, and the first thing that made me like it, was how much it reminded me of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In both of these games, the player is given an open world and a single objective and is unleashed to accomplish the goal however they see fit. A weird sense of joy came over me when I discovered that, after having played the game for about two hours, I hadn’t actually examined the crime scene or spoken to the main suspect because I’d been too distracted by looking around the island and finding clues. Unlike other investigation or puzzle games I’ve played, Paradise Killer easily incorporated the evidence I found on my distracted adventures because players are able to gather evidence, speak to witnesses, and form theories in any order they choose. So, while I may not have known exactly who was killed where under mysterious circumstances, I did learn that Crimson Acid was a very cool hero of an ancient conflict and she had some very bad feelings about the crime that I had yet to bother checking out. On top of that, the mechanics of the game help players navigate the island and sniff out leads in a number of ways. The feature players will unavoidably learn first is that Lady Love Dies can fall from any distance without suffering so much as a stubbed toe. This allows players to clamber around the island’s mountains and homes without any fear in pursuit of hidden knowledge. Secondly, anything a player can pick up or interact with is bordered by highly visible brackets and make one of a handful of sounds when Love Dies is nearby. This makes sure that players who put in the effort to climb the island’s many crystalline statues are extremely unlikely to miss something valuable on top of said statue. Lastly, once players have gathered all the evidence they feel they need to present their case, the end of game trial is just as free form, allowing players to accuse anyone of any crime using whatever evidence they wish. Of course, accusations won’t stick without sufficient proof, so players have to be careful with their claims.
Paradise Killer isn’t just mechanically great, it’s also got excellent writing, which is good because it’s got a lot of work to do. It’s not easy to explain a society of immortals, hopping from reality to reality as they attempt to revive long-dead and extremely malicious gods, but Paradise Killer does a great job of it by introducing elements over time across character interviews and collectible tchotchkes. Players don’t have to immediately grasp the complexities of New Night, a war goddess with two dog heads, they hear about her slowly, first alluded to in passing by an island security officer but eventually being fully explained over the course of several hours. Beyond the game’s eldritch lore, the conversations with the various suspects on the island are entertaining and satisfying thanks to both skilled writing and a clear and well-executed idea for each of the characters. Sam Day Break, the island’s leading bartender, is the classic good listener all bartenders are in fiction, but after a few conversations with him players discover a past that haunts him and a worrying drive to excel at his craft. Henry Division, possibly my favorite character, is perpetually furious as one might be after a decade of demonic possession, but there’s also a resigned bitterness to him born from the bizarre and terrible way non-Syndicate members are brought to each island. No character in Paradise Killer is a simple archetype and each are written wonderfully.
In spite of how much I love this game, and I do love this game, it’s not perfect. The thing that got under my skin the most is how many blood crystals are scattered about the island. Blood crystals, for some reason, are the currency on the island and they’re absolutely everywhere, but, from a distance, they look a good bit like retrievable clues, so there were quite a few times I spent several minutes climbing to some out of the way hill only to discover my only reward was a bit more cash. I don’t know if the developers planned on me using the game’s fast travel system more than I did, but I ended the game with just about 50 of the things, which is plenty when you consider that the most expensive item I saw cost two crystals. Along those same lines, a vast number of the game’s small side quests were frustrating because they mostly awarded two or three blood crystals. This was annoying, not only because I had plenty of blood crystals already, but because some side quests rewarded me with actual information that helped my investigation. Worse, a lot of these side quests are genuinely interesting, such as a ghost refusing to move on until it is proven to them whether or not their killer was a vampire. Not every side mission needed to have plot-relevant information, obviously that would be a pain for less exploration focused players, but it would have been nice to get a new skin for my computer helper Starlight or a new music track to play as I wandered the island. Another issue, and this may have been because I played on the Switch instead of PC, was that Paradise Killer had a nasty habit of freezing and skipping, especially in the later hours of the game. I was even unlucky enough to have the game crash on me, erasing progress. My final issue is that this game has no auto-save feature and requires players to stop at save points. It’s 2020, there’s no reason we need to still be using this archaic feature. There are plenty of save points all across the island, but there is nothing good about this system.
Maybe it’s my love of eldritch lore or my distaste of the rigid structure of most puzzle and detective games, but Paradise Killer might be my favorite of the genre. I don’t know that it’s going to be for everyone, but I think it does something that can’t be found anywhere else. That combined with excellent writing and great character design, I can easily recommend Paradise Killer for the full $20 price.
Buy this game at full price
It’s worth every penny they’re asking
